


Epilogue

by yuletide_archivist



Category: L.A. Confidential (1997)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-22
Updated: 2005-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:26:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two weeks later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epilogue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RubyNye

 

 

1.

"It's alright," Lynn says, and he can't see her eyes in the dark. She draws him down slow onto the bed, her fingers brushing over his sides. "Calm down," and Bud nods once, slow. She smiles at him and kisses just like he likes it, takes her time. Bud wraps her hair around his fingers, tilts her head back, and bites a little at Lynn's chin, licks up, toward her ear.

"We're fine, Bud," she tells him, and he murmurs, "Yeah," against her skin, and she takes his free hand and lifts it to her cheek. He pauses before he lets her drawn his hand all the way, and Lynn's foot brushes over his calf.

"You sure?" he says, brushing one thumb her swollen cheeks, the round palm marks there, fits his whole hand against one, matches the curves of his fingers to the curve of the bruise. "This what you want?"

"Bud," Lynn says again, arches up against him so her breasts are nice and tight to his chest, "stop staring at my face and fuck me."

2.

No one new comes or goes, after the yellow police tape blows away in the breeze. It takes over two weeks for the holes in the crime scene to get patched. The dirt outside what used to be Captain Dudley's permanent room is still red.

A woman living in the fourth trailer down the row from the crime scene hangs her clothes to dry, and she pushes her hair out of her eyes, the dishwater blonde strands slipping out from behind her ears. She pauses, and rests her hand on the doorframe. She rubs her thumb over the over the bullet hole in the frame, smiles a little at her son's small white socks, and thinks that she's happy the place is mostly cleared out. She's been sleeping better in the past week, none of the cars rumbling and out of the driveway that there used to be. No yelling, no low voiced men shuffling around in front of her room while she tries to soothe the baby.

The Victory Motel is quiet again. She likes it better that way.

3.

Matt Reynold's mother sits at her tabletop in Hannibal, Missouri and stares out the window as the sun comes up and her husband and two living sons drive off to work. There are floors to be scrubbed, sheets to be scrubbed, and at the end of the day, her own nails will be caked with grime, and she will have to scrub those, too before she puts the roast in the oven. She spreads the thin fabric of her cotton dress over her thighs, and breathes deep.

There are no pictures of Matt in the house. The last one she saw was in black and white on the cover of Hush-Hush magazine, and her husband's grim jaw had hardened, his strong arm had swept it off the countertop. Matt wrote six careful letters from prison, and all they ever sent in response was one painfully printed line, over and over, "The Lord forgives when repentance is true."

She doesn't know how Matt died. She didn't ask. She woke up one morning, and her husband was kneeling at the foot of the bed, curved over his folded hands, his mouth working, his eyes shut.

"What?" she said, and he didn't answer, and she said, "What?" and he said, "Matt," and that was the last time any of them said his name.

She sits in the kitchen in Hannibal, and she stares at her hands on her floral dress, and the sun starts coming up and she remembers her youngest son not for so long she looses focus, not for so long she feels guilty, but she remembers his sweet smile, his curling hair and bright eyes. She remembers how he used to trust people, how he was her only son to follow her to church and listen without fidgeting. Then she stands up, and fills her tin pail with soap and suds, and rolls up her sleeves. She gets to work.

4.

DA Ellis Lowe is in the Sunday morning news again, standing third from the left in a picture taken at Captain Dudley Smith's funeral. He looks distinguished and appropriately solemn in his navy blue suit, matching tie. He's shown in full profile, looking off into the distance as the shining mahogany coffin is lowered into the ground, and behind him the flag snaps in the wind, and the honor guard raises their rifles.

The long sleeves of his jacket cover the cast on his wrist, and since it's a still, no one reading the newspaper would know that he's been walking with a limp for a week. His face is in the sun, so no one would be able to see that he hasn't been sleeping, and his eyes stare hollowly, exhaustedly out of his grey face.

In the black and white spread across the LA times, he's just another anguished friend mourning the death of a heroic ideal of a police officer, not a brittle LA swish barely holding himself upright to watch a murderer, drug smuggler and untrustworthy sonofabitch get passed off as some kind of legend.

It's amazing, Ellis Lowe thinks, how a picture shows you what you want to see.

5.

The car's shimmying across the highway, and Ed's staring out directly into the sun going down. His hand's sweaty on the wheel, his tie is loose around his neck. He rubs his hand over his hip, shifts his back against his seat, leans his head all the way back.

Dust kicks up in clouds, pebbles dinging the green sign that tells Ed he's leaving Arizona. The map to Bisbee is crumpled by his feet, torn and dirty.

"So, you comin' back any time soon?" Lynn asked him, folding her white arms as he filled the trunk with his bags.

Ed frowned at his brown leather suitcase, his hip throbbed where Bud had left thumb prints, where Lynn had dragged her teeth. "I don't know," he said, honestly. "Maybe."

He turned, and Bud watched him from the living room, through the wide white venetian blinds. He raised one hand as Ed pulled out of the driveway, and then turned away before Ed gunned it down the street.

Arizona thanks you for stopping by!

Ed grits his teeth, and heads toward California.

 


End file.
